Red Herring in White Walls
by JuliaBoon
Summary: Shortly after Patrick Jane's family is murdered by Red John, he is taken to Heritage Oaks Mental Hospital & spirals into a depression that almost costs him his life. There he meets a friendly doctor who, over time, pulls him from his insanity; but, as more time passes, Jane begins to suspect the friendly doctor Jonathan Herring of something more nefarious. Rated M for dark themes.
1. The End

The door was closed.  
It was never closed, with all the running and excitement of that bounding girl, the door was never closed; and yet it was. Patrick Jane reached out his hand and gripped the doorknob as he slowly turned it. He pushed open the door and gasped.  
They were dead.  
His wife and daughter were dead and staring at him, was his face. Bloody and smiling, Red John stared back at him and laughed. The dripping sticky blood that had been used as paint was smeared above of what remained of Patrick's life. Patrick dropped to his knees and wept.  
It took two hours before he had enough mind to call the police.  
"My family is dead." was all he managed to say before the tears welt up in his eyes again.  
At first the police at Patrick's phrasing over the phone, suspected him, but as soon as they caught sight of the now infamous smiley face, they quickly changed their minds.  
They tried their best to ask him questions but they didn't understand that Patrick Jane wasn't there anymore. He just stared and soon an ambulance came to take him away.

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 **A/N: Okay, this is cannon and will contain some spoilers; mainly for season 3-4. However, up until Chapter Four everything "could" have happened off-screen. Any comments would be welcome! And if you want to point out any inaccuracies I would really appreciate it! R &R :D**


	2. Heritage Oaks

Heritage Oaks Hospital was the kind of place that no one wanted to end up at, despite their good food, comfortable beds and friendly staff. They catered to only one clientele, the insane; and in a way that fit Patrick Jane perfectly. He hadn't talked since the call to the police yet it had been one week. The few psychiatrists who had tried to treat him found heavy resistance and so they had resolved that for now Jane just needed time. He was distant, and moved like the dead. He wandered from room to room without purpose. To someone who believed, they might say that his body was alive but that his soul had left him.

The cafeteria was large and bright, with smiling women in white wearing hairnets. The bench seats were filled with people, all with problems of one type or another. Patrick was put into the line and moved with its flow until he reached the server.  
"What will it be today sweetie?" a brunette asked, but Patrick just stared, his eyes wandering slightly.  
"Bit shy are you?" she inquired, suddenly a larger man with a balding head smiled and said,  
"He don't talk."  
"Never?" she asked, with concern in her voice.  
The man shook his head, "Nope, never. He just floats around." the man stepped in front of Jane and picked up his tray full of food. The server smiled, with pity, and put on Patrick's tray a serving of mashed potato and steak strips as well as the appropriate cutlery. Jane picked up the tray and floated over to an empty bench. He absently shovelled the food into his mouth until the bell sounded to return to his room. Yet just before he slipped the knife into his palm and stood, allowing himself to be led back to his room.


	3. The Attempt

His soul at returned to him but it was so painful that Jane could only think of one way out. He placed the knife to his wrist and sliced from the bottom to the top on his left than his right in quick succession. As he blood began to seep out of his body he fell to the floor and, dabbing his finger into the pool of blood, Patrick made a smiley face. Soon his eyes closed and he let the darkness take him.  
The bright light that flooded his eyes was not that of the other side but the sharp florescent lighting of the surgical room. They had found him in his room and had saved him, he was so very upset. After his suicide attempt, Heritage Oaks changed their tactics and brought in their best doctor, if known to be a bit controversial.


	4. The Doctor is In

"Hello Mr Jane, I'm Dr Herring."  
Jane scowled at the doctor who stood before him, he felt the urge to flip him off but fought it. He was the one in control here and the doctor would know that.  
"That was quite the nasty cut you did to yourself." the doctor began, as he knelt down beside Jane.  
"But I can understand why you would do it." Herring continued simply. Oh this man was so strange Jane thought, he was so friendly but the tone of his voice held something. Jane shook his head in contempt.  
"Not much of a talker, are you now?" Herring smiled, "That's strange isn't it? After you were such a smooth talker psychic before." Jane's eyes went red with anger and Herring saw it.  
"Oh that's it! Rage. Give me rage, not sadness." Herring stood up suddenly, "Scream at me! Tell me off! Think of me as your very own personal verbal punching bag!" the doctor yelled.  
Jane jumped to his feet, "Fuck you!" slipped from Jane's mouth.  
"Oh that's better. Now it only I could get that smoothness back..."

After the first words slipped from Jane's mouth the rest came so easily. Jane was no longer silent and Herring had been the one to do it. Herring was indeed quite strange, he was tall with a mop of jet black hair and bright domineering emerald green eyes. He was about the same age as Jane and was thin but toned, his jaw square and his cheekbones high. He wore casual clothes with a white doctor's coat, a little laminate with his name written upon it hanging from his left breast pocket. He carried himself with purpose and zeal, all this Jane noticed but could not get a read off the doctor; to Jane he was an enigma.  
However all this didn't stop the two from talking. At first the doctor pushed the subject of Jane's wife and child but when he resisted the doctor receded and began to chat with him about other things. They chatted about sports like men often do but soon the conversation drifted to Jane's profession.  
"How do you do it?" Herring asked as he sat in a fold out chair across from Jane who was sitting on the edge of his bed. They always met there and it never had occurred to Jane how strange that was, always meeting your shrink in your hospital bedroom.  
"Do what?" Jane asked, knowing full well what the doctor meant but trying to avoid the question, as he ran his hand through his blond hair.  
Herring shook his head, "Trick people? _Fool_ them." he started to fiddle with his badge as he looked Jane in the eye, "I could never do that, people always know fully who I am." the doctor confessed.  
Jane smiled, "Oh people know who I am when I con them." he began, "But they _choose_ to believe in the lies. Truth doesn't make people happy, not really, people seek lies not truth."  
"Hmm." Herring mulled this over for a moment before continuing, "So does that mean you are looking for a lie Mr Jane?"  
Jane suddenly looked up and turned his head slightly to his right in thought. Truthfully the idea had never occurred to him which seemed silly. Jane had been raised in a family of con-artists and since he was young he'd always been the trickster never the mark. A thought struck the man as he replied, "No. I'm not looking for a lie. I am seeking the truth; because I don't care about happiness, I want the truth even if that truth causes me great pain."  
Herring smiled and stood. "I think that, Mr Jane, is a grand revelation; one I hope will lead to many more. Yet now our time is up; until next time Patrick." Herring walked out of the room and left Jane to himself. That revelation rattled around inside Jane's head; he was seeking truth. Fair enough, but what truth was he really seeking? The answer was swiftly apparent as he sat in his room inside Heritage Oaks Mental Hospital; the real truth he wanted to get his hands on was the identity of a certain serial killer because Jane had realised that he deeply wanted to kill the man known as Red John. Jane wanted to kill that man with a passion stronger than anything he'd ever felt in his entire life and he promised that if he ever got out of this place that he would.


	5. An Eventuality

Apparently Herring had discussed Jane's improving condition with the hospital staff because the next day Jane was released back into the general population. Again Jane was placed into the lunchroom line and when he reached the serving lady she smiled.  
"What will it be?" she asked him, Jane smiled back and replied, "The chicken." behind him the large man's eyes bulged.  
"Ay! You done talked." he exclaimed.  
Jane nodded, "I do believe I seem to be returning to myself." They received their food and sat down together on an empty table bench.  
"So I'm Louie, Louie Catchatori. You are den?" the large balding man asked sticking out his hand, his thick Italian-American accent ringing off the white walls of the lunchroom.  
Jane reached out and shook it, "Patrick Jane."  
"So I hear you got Doc Herring as your shrink." the man began, his voice booming and his hands active. Jane looked the man over and wondered just who he was trying to fool. He was a forty odd man with a balding head who was about twenty pounds overweight and who wore way too much gold jewellery. The man was laughable and gave off an offensive atmosphere yet seemed to possess a kind aura which drew in Patrick.  
Jane nodded to his question and then asked, "Have you met him?"  
Louie rattled his head, "Nah. Unlike the rest of 'em Doc Herring don't see many of us patients." a smile crept up on his face and he moved in a few inches closer, "Rumour haz it that the ol' doc has some funny way's about him."  
Jane was now intrigued and moved in as well, "How so?" he inquired.  
Louie chuckled, "He got in here about a month or so and until then nobody had heard about him; they stuck him with some patients and everything was fine, your friend Louie has been here for a while and I know everything about this place." Jane got the feeling that Louie always knew everything about every place he was, he had this 'mob boss' feeling to him.  
"Anyway," Louie continued, "apparently he had something go wrong with a patient and the men upstairs didn't like it so they cut down his patients to like zero."  
Louie smiled and slapped Jane across his back, hard, "Dat was until you showed up." he bellowed, "None of the regular shrinks could get at you for sure!" he laughed full heartedly, "You're one tough cookie! So they all thought 'what the hell' and brought in Herring. They say he was a really good shrink once!"  
Jane mulled this over for a moment, but truthfully this information held no real merit; Jane wasn't here to sift through his psychiatrists murky background, he was here to figure out some way to get out of this place, hunt down Red John and kill him. After that Jane knew that everything would feel much better and if it didn't, well he could always come back for another session couldn't he? It was at this moment that the noise of the lunchroom faded and another noise took its place. At the back of the lunchroom was a small and relatively ancient television set which was tuned into the news. An attractive woman with typical blond hair and a plastic expression was divulging the latest with a relativity predictable backdrop of a crime scene behind her. At the time Jane had not been paying any attention to the screen that was until the woman said two heart stopping words which caused Patrick to jump to his feet, his eyes drawn in. "Red John...She has been brutally murdered by infamous serial killer Red John in her home behind me just last night. 25 year old Sally Majors was a medical student who had only a year left on her residency. Her parents have released this statement..." Jane couldn't believe what he had seen.

Jane was laying on his bed, gazing up at the ceiling. Above his head was a water stain, it hung above him ominously as if it was trying to reveal something. It was as if the stain was striving to warn him that this world wasn't real, that these walls were only paper and soon it would all collapse around him. Then again the stain did look a little like Bob Dylan so perhaps, Jane thought, he was overthinking things. It was at this moment that the door to his room opened and Jane saw the face of Doctor Herring out of the corner of his eye.  
"Good afternoon Patrick." Herring said, his emerald eyes seemingly brighter than last time. Jane didn't move. He didn't even acknowledge Herring's presence.  
"Mr Jane?" Herring asked as he took a step forward than stopped.  
He nodded knowingly, "Hmm, so you've heard." He reached down and flipped out the chair, sitting down across from Jane who still hadn't moved. Herring sighed, "Patrick, it was bound to happen." he began. Suddenly Jane popped up, causing Herring to jump slightly, crying, "Bound to happen?" he shouted, "How can you _say_ that?"  
Herring shook his head, "If you'd only let me finish." he took a breath and replied, "There is a reason why they call serial killers 'serial'. It denotes the circular nature of the condition. Most serial killers have a pattern that they must adhere to, in this way they are predictable. Serial killers kill to fulfil a need which cannot be sated otherwise. Therefore, Red John killing again was an eventuality."  
Jane nodded slightly and fell back onto the bed. Herring always talked so frankly about everything, he never beat around the bush; if you asked him a question you would get the answer as best as he could give it. This seemed to Patrick both an asset and a drawback because although Herring gave the truth it seemed Herring didn't know how to soften it. Jane couldn't argue with the doctor, after all he was correct. What was he really expecting? Why would Red John just stop? There were bound to be others and yet just because it made sense, didn't make it any less hard.  
"What would you do doctor if I told you that I wanted to kill Red John?" Patrick said slowly, his eyes still on the water stain above him.  
Herring's eyes widened for a single second before he replied, "Well I do know what I should do which is report your intentions to the authorities, however as to what I would do well..." Herring's eyes rolled over Patrick and when they stopped to rest on his eyes he continued, "I'd ask you a question."  
Jane rolled over, ending up sitting on the edge of the bed. He ran his hands over his face and then looked deep into the doctor's eyes replying, "And what question would that be?"  
Herring smiled strangely then glanced at his watch, "I am sorry, but our time is up. Until next time Mr Jane." Herring stood and exited the room, leaving Jane to wonder about his strange doctor.

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 **A/N: There is something not quite right about this chapter, so I'd love to hear what you think about it. All comments and suggestions welcome!**


End file.
